Bacterial attachment to surfaces in virtually any non-sterile aquatic environment is a well-established phenomenon. Industrial efforts to prevent colonization or to clean fouled surfaces amount to costly expenditures in a number of industrial sectors. Surfactants are regularly employed in water treatment programs as agents believed to play a role in the removal of organic masses from surfaces, in the enhancement of biocide efficacy or in the assistance in the water miscibility of various biocidal agents. Surfactants are also regularly used in the agrichemical business, particularly to enhance the action of herbicides. This is accomplished by using the surfactants to alter the surface behavior of the applied droplets, maximizing their interaction with the leaf surface.
There are numerous examples of surfactants which are able to inhibit the colonization of surfaces by inhibiting the overall growth of the organisms in the target environment. Most surfactants, regardless of class, show some inhibition of bacterial growth when used at concentrations high enough to impede surface colonization. In the water treatment industry, the most well known class of surfactants which impart a measure of colonization resistance to submerged surfaces are the cationic quaternary amine surfactants, which also function as biocides. However, even relatively mild nonionic surfactants can function in an analogous fashion. The concentration of nonionic surfactants necessary to mediate toxicity is substantially higher than for cationic surfactants, however.
Surfactants have historically been added to biocide packages because they (1) help to maintain some actives in solution which may otherwise separate and (2) help relatively hydrophobic biocides to be more miscible in an aqueous environment. Surfactants have also been considered as enhancers of the efficacy of biocides against biofilm-associated organisms by increasing the accessibility of the biocide to its cellular target.
The present invention refers to a method for enhancing the activity of biocides to control the growth of microbes in an aqueous system. The materials of the present invention have been previously used in areas such as fiber wetting in the textile industry.